hundred and twenty

3:4 hundred and twenty. This number should perhaps be “twenty” cubits. It is likely that the “hundred” was inadvertently added in transmission. The building itself was only thirty cubits high (I Kings 6:2), so it seems impossible that Solomon would make its porch a hundred-and-twenty cubits high. It should be remembered that the doctrine of verbal inerrancy applies specifically only to the original autographs, not to copies thereof, and the original autographs have long vanished. Although the Hebrew scribes were meticulous in their attempts to make accurate copies, they could hardly avoid a few mistakes in such lengthy documents, all of which had to be transmitted by hand copying. It is significant that most mistakes in copying had to do with numbers, which were notoriously subject to misreading. It may be possible, however, that the very high “porch” was intended as a sort of steeple.